Samsung Galaxy S III Can’t Run Official KitKat? Not on XDA!

Not too long ago, we learned that Samsung canceled its plans to release KitKat for their former flagship device from the first quarter of 2012, the Samsung Galaxy S III. This is due to their failure “to load system apps” because of the limited amount of device RAM—or at least that’s what we’re told in an official statement.

But of course, this is XDA, and our devs immediately undertook the task of getting TouchWiz-laden KitKat onto the device. From the same article linked above, you may have noticed that the Samsung Galaxy Note II has already received a fully functional official KitKat build. And given the similarities in hardware, it didn’t take long to see users attempt to port its ROM for use on the Galaxy SIII.

XDA Senior Member forumber2 noticed that eMMC partition is too small to run bloated TouchWiz properly, so he decided to try his luck booting from the SD card. After swapping kernels, the Note II’s build started properly and almost everything was running as intended. Well, other than sensors, WiFi, RIL, and a few other device features.

Forumber2 made a video demonstrating KitKat on the i9300. Now, it is believed that using some bits and pieces from GT-i9305 (a Qualcomm-based variant of the Galaxy S III) will help solving all of the remaining issues. Hopefully, soon everyone can enjoy TouchWiz-laden KitKat on the not-so-old S III.

The thread demonstrating KitKat on Samsung Galaxy S III can be found here. Hopefully the community will once again show the OEM that “impossible” is just a term to describe their laziness.

[Big thanks to XDA Forum Moderator Siberian Tiger for the tip.]

source: xdadevelopers